West Bank and Gaza

What would bring together the China trade shock, road blocks in the West Bank, and the Belt and Road initiative? The 6th Annual IMF-World Bank-WTO Trade Research Conference, at which staff of the three institutions presented the results of twelve research projects.

The Conference is over, but the website lives on, and here you can find preliminary versions of papers. To whet your appetite, here are three examples of research that use creative methodologies and raise provocative questions.

Those of you who have visited Dubai in recent years may relate to what I am going to say: Dubai is in the middle of the desert, and its land, not that long ago, was really worth nothing. Now it is one of the most vibrant international cities in the world. All this happened in a relatively short time span.

We’re used to talking about how the failure to invest in water management can impede economic growth, but the positive case for water management investments can be just as compelling. With support from the Israeli government, my colleagues and I recently took a study tour to Israel, and what we saw on the ground showed that combining policy and technology can lead not only to better local water management, but also result in a multi-billion dollar, export-driven industry.

World Bank Vice President, Hafez Ghanem addresses the key factors influencing the economies of the Middle East and North Africa region, and the steps needed to promote more sustainable growth and unlock the potential of the region’s large youth population.

What are the major factors affecting the economies of the Middle East and North Africa region?

This is the second part of our interview with with Safaa El Tayeb El-Kogali, World Bank Practice Manager in the Education Global Practice, on the challenges faced by the region’s education systems and the efforts to address them.

On the heels of the first World Development Report focused entirely on education, and its critical importance for stable and inclusive societies, we launch our annual ‘Back to School’ series that focuses on the state of education in the Middle East and North Africa region. We begin the series with a two-part interview with Safaa El Tayeb El-Kogali, World Bank Practice Manager in the Education Global Practice, on the challenges faced by the region’s education systems and the efforts to address them.

History repeats, history rhymes and sometimes history regresses. Wandering through cities and fields in the Middle East and North Africa a thousand years ago, you would have been struck by the security of water supplies, the irrigation enabling highly productive farms and governance structure in place to allocate and value water in a sustainable way, supporting a flourishing civilization.

When it comes to education and human development, the Palestinian territories have traditionally outperformed countries with similar GNI per capita as well as its neighbors in the Middle East and North Africa region (figures 1 and 2). Despite facing one of the highest unemployment rates in the world and a severe lack of employment opportunities in the private sector, until 2010, Palestinian youth continued to invest in education.

Equipped with more education than any previous generation, young Palestinians are now moving into adulthood with uncertainty about what their futures might hold amidst a protracted risk of conflict and an economy with steadily rising unemployment.

"We have electricity for two hours every 24 hours," says a high-ranking energy official in Gaza.

Up to just 10 years ago, Gaza enjoyed full, round-the-clock electricity supply 24 hours a day. But by 2016, this was reduced to 12 hours per day due to severe power shortages — and the situation has declined rapidly since.